Satellites fall out of the sky on a somewhat regular basis as far as I understood. I must say I think there are ulterior motives to this. Either just testing space weaponry or there's something on that satellite they don't want anyone to know about. Then again, I'm not really much of a conspiracy nut, so maybe it's exactly what they say it is. I am a little surprised that they have weapons capable of reaching a satellite. I always thought we weren't supposed to do that. Also, is it just me or might it make sense to put some sort of auto-destruct on these things in the future so we don't have to spend millions launching missiles? What's a pound of C4 cost?
The whole reason the satellite is going to crash in the first place (keep your conspiracy theories to yourselves, thanks) is that there was a malfunction of some sort that kept the orbital correction systems from working. If something caused those systems to malfunction, it's not too big of a stretch to imagine that an auto-destruct system might malfunction too under the same circumstances.
Besides, the US has got gobs of missiles just sitting around waiting to blow stuff up. It'd be a shame to have them go to waste ;)
OK, so maybe no electrical auto-destruct, but how about a couple pounds of gunpowder so when it enters and starts to get hot it just blows itself apart? We've been making big booms for centuries before we had electronics.
The OST, or Outer Space Treaty, which damn near everyone who matters except the USA *cough*, is an agreement to not place weapons on celestial objects (so Dr. Evil can't put his base on the moon if it's got a nuke in it) and iirc not to place weapons in space at all, but again iirc it says nothing about not sending missiles into space.
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Satellites fall out of the sky on a somewhat regular basis as far as I understood. I must say I think there are ulterior motives to this. Either just testing space weaponry or there's something on that satellite they don't want anyone to know about. Then again, I'm not really much of a conspiracy nut, so maybe it's exactly what they say it is. I am a little surprised that they have weapons capable of reaching a satellite. I always thought we weren't supposed to do that. Also, is it just me or might it make sense to put some sort of auto-destruct on these things in the future so we don't have to spend millions launching missiles? What's a pound of C4 cost?
The Norden Bombsight had autodestruct.
The whole reason the satellite is going to crash in the first place (keep your conspiracy theories to yourselves, thanks) is that there was a malfunction of some sort that kept the orbital correction systems from working. If something caused those systems to malfunction, it's not too big of a stretch to imagine that an auto-destruct system might malfunction too under the same circumstances.
Besides, the US has got gobs of missiles just sitting around waiting to blow stuff up. It'd be a shame to have them go to waste ;)
We've had ASAT missiles since the Cold War. So's Russia. This is old tech, relatively speaking.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-satellite_weapon
OK, so maybe no electrical auto-destruct, but how about a couple pounds of gunpowder so when it enters and starts to get hot it just blows itself apart? We've been making big booms for centuries before we had electronics.
The OST, or Outer Space Treaty, which damn near everyone who matters except the USA *cough*, is an agreement to not place weapons on celestial objects (so Dr. Evil can't put his base on the moon if it's got a nuke in it) and iirc not to place weapons in space at all, but again iirc it says nothing about not sending missiles into space.